Negen vogels op boomtakken c. 1925 - 1935

A. Tinbergen made this small drawing of nine birds on tree branches, probably with ink on paper. It's all about the scratchy marks, the kind of intimate work that comes from someone really looking, and drawing as a way of seeing. Check out the three birds in the middle, singing away on their branch. Each bird is a mass of tiny, frantic marks, almost vibrating with energy. Those little scribbles create the texture of feathers, the roundness of their bodies. Then there are the branches themselves, thick and thin, with little loops suggesting new shoots and leaves. There's so much attention to detail, but it’s not about perfection; it’s about the joy of mark-making. This feels like a cousin to the work of Alfred Kubin; that same love of the quirky and slightly unsettling, all rendered with obsessive detail. Art isn't about answers, it's about keeping the conversation going.